The field of this invention is transport devices for barrels and drums, particularly non-motorized wheeled carts that can support a filled fifty-five gallon or other capacity barrel or drum. Reference to “drum” in this disclosure shall include barrel containers as well.
Existing non-motorized transport devices for drums include carts and dollies that have a horizontal base supported on four casters, the base having an upright rim or lip to prevent the drum from sliding off the base. Such devices allow the drum to be lowered onto the cart and to be manually moved around the work place. Some existing devices include towing handles pivotally fixed to the base.
In the use of devices of this sort, the drum must be hoisted upward to allow the cart to be placed below the drum and then the drum lowered onto the cart within the confines of the rim or upstanding lip.
Another device for transport of an upright drum is a standard two-wheeled hand truck having a platform onto which the drum is moved so that the hand truck can be tipped to support the drum on the wheels of the hand truck while the drum is moved.
Because a hand truck is a versatile device useful to transport various objects, when a drum is to be moved, the laborer likely must locate and retrieve the hand truck from wherever it may be located, a disadvantage. It is also known that worker injuries arise from use of two-wheeled hand trucks, such as when the worker loses control of the hand truck, causing the center of gravity of the tipping load to move to the user's side of the fulcrum defined by the wheels on the ground surface. This is an additional disadvantage to use of a two-wheeled hand truck to move a drum.
In other existing devices, the drum is transported while lying on its sidewall.
A drum dolly which remains with the drum and which may be loaded without lifting of the drum is a needed improvement.